"No really, I got nothing … !"

You want blood? You got it!

My rhetorical question to you is when would be the time you’d least like to have a nose bleed? My answer would be when you are half way through the second of two two and a half hour training sessions for live users and you are trying to explain the intricacies of an ASP.NET web application!

One minute you’re mid flow describing how client details can be manipulated on your latest, shiny new web app and the next you’re mid a totaly different kind of flow. Fortunately for me all but one of the attendees were women and therefore had packs of tissues to hand. I’m not sure why my hand was anywhere near my nose at this point anyway but thank god it was! Otherwise, knowing how course attendees can be, they may have all been too polite to point out I was leaking until I’d actually passed out.

On the upside this could be a very handy tactic if judiciously employed to deflect a particularly nasty questions about your PowerPoint presentation or handout or if your app had just crashed and you needed a distraction to hide a screen now filled with diagnostic and trace information 🙂